Cabrera found guilty on all counts

Real estate broker Samir Cabrera was found guilty on all 11 counts he was facing.

Wednesday, January 14th 2009, 6:20 PM EST

Updated:

Wednesday, December 23rd 2009, 3:17 PM EST

FORT MYERS: Real estate broker Samir Cabrera was found guilty on all 11 counts of money laundering and fraud. The jury came out with their decision shortly before 7 p.m. - four hours after they told the judge they had reached a deadlock.

As the verdict was read, Cabrera mouthed the words "I love you" to his wife Jessica Stilwell who mostly held her head in her hands. Her father, Lee County Manager Don Stilwell, comforted her.

Cabrera had no comment after the verdict was given and was allowed to go free on bond. But he will be sentenced on April 27 at 9 a.m. It's at that time that the judge will decide his fate.

The charges carry a possibility of a maximum 190 years in prison. But Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy says realistically, he will likely be sentenced to seven to 15 years.

After the verdict was read, we spoke with Molloy. He said the guilty verdict was what he had been expecting and reiterated that his office is dedicated to the pursuit of criminal activity. [Watch the raw interview]

"This type of activity can't go unchecked and I think that's what the jury was saying," said Molloy. "We believe that this was a just a proper verdict."

At the sentencing, the judge will take into consideration a 40-45 page report prepared by the Office of Probation, which determined the minimum and maximum length of sentencing.

Some of the factors in the report include Cabrera's criminal history - or the lack thereof, the amount of money he stole, the background of the case, and his employment history.

John Mills, Cabrera's attorney, had no comment except to say that he plans to file for an appeal.

We also had a chance to speak with alternate juror Doug Harsanyi who sat through nearly a week of testimony taking everything into account. And he admits that some of it was pretty difficult to follow.

"Just the corporate structures how everything was laid out - it was very confusing. I actually ended up drawing a lot of charts," he said. "I'm assuming it was just as difficult for everybody else as it was for me."

But ultimately, Harsanyi said, he thought Cabrera seemed too confident to be ignorant of what was going on.

"The way he ran everything else, I can't believe he didn't know," he said. "He put the nail in the coffin when he testified because of his attitude."

Earlier in the day, the jury had told the judge they were at an impasse only an hour and a half after an alternate juror was excused.

The judge told the jurors to go back to the jury room and continue deliberating.

At a 1:30 p.m. hearing, that alternate juror was booted off the case for making a phone call that could be considered inappropriate.

The juror called an acquaintance who is an IRS agent around 9:30 a.m.

He told the agent he wasn't calling about the case, but wanted to know more about what the agent did with the IRS. The agent warned the U.S. Attorney's Office, and prosecutors asked Judge John Steele to remove the juror.

The defense agreed.

While prosecutors don't think the juror had any malicious intentions, they thought it was best to remove him from the case as a precaution.

His removal left two alternate jurors.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy says there was no need to tell the rest of the jury about what happened with the alternate because they hadn't had contact with him since closing arguments ended.

The jury also sent Steele a note that he accidentally redacted part of Count 8, and the error was corrected.